Turn the radio on, turn the radio up -- Good stories for podficcing

[zvi]

What sort of characteristics make a story good for podficcing? Are there any specific writing techniques that make it easier to record? Or what about making it easier to listen to? Are there specific characters who, when listening to a story from their POV, make it easier to fall into the story? Are there any authors that you'd point a new reader toward because they're really achievable?

I'd love to hear about either specific techniques or, if you can't isolate the techniques but do have excellent examples, please trot those out.

Comments

[paraka]

I find that every fic I read these days I analyze to see how it would podfic.

In general, you have to keep an eye out for some of the special things author's have been putting into their fics. For example, Drastically Redefining Protocol, the reading of this fic was awesome, however the author had a lot of articles imbedded into the story, and quite a few at the end (I found that the podfic was missing an important part of the story since the reader didn't read all of them).

Such stories are a challenge to try to read. There are also quite a few fics with emails imbedded into them, which can make it awkward to read.

Also, something to consider is how similar the author's writing style is to your own. I'm doing a podfic right now (for help_haiti) where the word patterns are just so different from my own style that I find myself messing up every other sentence.

[darkemeralds]

I love the challenge of non-linear narratives and embedded documents and stuff--at least, I love it conceptually, though I've never tried recording one. In fact, I disqualified one candidate for Podbang on that very basis.

But I want to mention an example from pro audiobooks that's been useful to my thinking: Simon Prebble's reading of the amazing Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

That novel tells a good one-quarter of its vast, subtextual story by means of footnotes, some of them digressions of considerable length. The reader does this simple, wonderful thing: he pauses at the point where the footnote is noted in the text, changes his voice to a very slightly more "scholarly" tone, and says, in deliberate, clear tones, "Footnote one." Then he gives the entire footnote.

At the end of the footnote, he pauses slightly, changes back to his narrative voice, and resumes reading, picking up in midsentence, etc.

It was extremely effective, and, I think, underscores the idea that sometimes quite a simple solution is available for what looks like a complicated podfic challenge.

(Sorry--I know my example isn't from podfic per se. Hope that's all right. If not, I will delete.)